Jon Rubinstein is no stranger to success. He was the engineer that architected the iPod, Apple’s single most successful product for years, until the iPhone was released in 2007. After more than fifteen years working with Steve Jobs, Jon Rubinstein left Apple in 2006. Around ten years earlier he had returned to the company with Steve Jobs and the rest of the NeXT crew. In those early years as a senior Apple executive he helped design some of the computers that turned the company around. The original iMac, the G4 Cube, the Power Mac G5 and of course the iPod. When he took on the position of CEO at Palm, he was shown significant confidence by those bankrolling the company’s new existence. Yet, Jon Rubinstein had not proven himself as a great CEO, but a great engineer; his long experience, his time close to Steve jobs and the other talented top executives at Apple would have definitely been much needed qualifications and experiences, however his lack of managerial experience at the CEO level was cause for concern, given that Palm was a company given a second chance.
Pre. An interesting curiosity and a failed delivery.
In early 2009, Palm announced the Pre, its latest device in the first running WebOS, a brand-new operating system for mobile phones that promised significantly improved user experiences, a low-barrier development platform based on Web technologies, and a much more aggressive marketing strategy, capable perhaps of competing face-to-face with Apple, Google and the other companies fighting for smartphone domination. Despite several months of building hype, a couple of (really bad) ads, and good coverage by the press, by the time the device was out in the market, the initial enthusiasm about it had waned. The Pre was an interesting device, yet it was also flawed in many ways: early hardware issues and slow software were detrimental to its failure, as was its absence from the market. It was a time when the iPhone was crossing the boundaries from an innovative, friendly, next-generation ‘phone’ to the powerful mobile computing platform most have come to love, a platform that encompasses the consumer, enterprise, gaming and lifestyle realms. Pre remained an interesting curiosity, a device with an innovative yet incomplete operating system, few applications, extremely little marketing and practically no mind share in the general public.
Bankruptcy and acquisition.
By 2010, it was clear that Palm’s resurgence had failed, despite the corporate rhetoric. The sales of Pre and its lower-end companion the Pixi had tanked, there were no new models in the horizon, the iPhone had established itself as the dominant smartphone in terms of mind share (and a great competitor in terms of market share) and Android, Google’s work-in-progress smartphone OS and at the time a really mediocre product, had stolen WebOSs place as the challenger in the smartphone wars. After relatively short period of denial, speculation, and negotiations, HP bought Palm and a new era of uncertainty started for both Palm and the nascent WebOS platform.
Rising up to the challenge
In the autumn of 2010, Palm/HP released a ‘filler’ device of arguable merit. Although it run Web OS 2.0, the new device, Pre 2, was a marginal evolution of the original Pre and Pre Plus devices that have preceded it. Rubinstein gave an interview at the Dive Into Mobile event in January 2011. During an interview full of cryptic responses he, more or less, stated Palm’s intention to lease a variety of products running Web OS, including smart phones, tablets and even netbooks and other specialty devices. Today, the company announced three brand-new devices that include Web OS 2.1, the latest version of what seems like of the most well thought-out, promising new operating systems for smartphones. The event, as well as the three devices, borrow much from Apple’s playbook: minimalism in product design, minimalism in the product range, excellent æsthetics and usability, and the fact that the announcement preceded the release of products by several months. Post-announcement sources at Palm stated that it is the company’s intention to release Web OS for notebook and desktop computers in the future. From a logistics and scale standpoint, if any company, other than the ones already in the game, was able do this, it would be HP: with its huge contracts, logistics network, experience in manufacturing, and the respective commands in the enterprise world it holds many important cards. In the other hand, HP might be considered a dinosaur, a company that sustains itself through maintenance and upgrade contracts, the sale of “gray”, boring devices for offices and equally “gray”, boring people. A company seldom synonymous with innovation, with little mind share, and perhaps little will to even try to beat Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM.
Today’s announcement of three seemingly good products is an excellent beginning that needs to be followed by similarly excellent marketing, production and technical campaigns if Palm/HP wishes to remain in contention as one of the major players in the new era of mobile computing. If nothing else, Palm/HP have created a very interesting, very promising product line powered by a polished operating system. Yet the difficult task still lies ahead: they need to convince the world, the markets, technology enthusiasts and everyone in between that they have the capacity to keep innovating, the capacity to market their products efficiently and effectively globally at affordable prices. To escape unscathed from the great battle for mobile computing, with the odds stacked against them in what is a replay of the great battle for the desktop platform we lived 20 years or so ago.